It is supposed to scare us witless. But, in truth, hearing a politician tell us, “We are heading toward sequester” is really no scarier than hearing the words, “I don’t like the looks of that mole” or “Welcome to Carnival Cruise Lines.”

The sequester was designed to be so horrible that both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress would recoil from it.

All sorts of things will be cut under a sequester: border security, airport security, Head Start, public housing support, NASA, special education, the FBI, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national defense.

But do you know what does not get cut? Take a guess. That’s right:

The salaries of senators and representatives do not get cut under sequester.

Congressional staffers — those people who actually read and write the laws, get coffee and have to go before the cameras to explain why their boss has been found in a Motel 6 with a pole dancer named Mercedes Dee Lite — face a 20 percent pay cut through furloughs.

But members of Congress? Their six-figure salaries will continue to roll in, even as money to Medicare patients gets cut.

Sure, members of Congress might have to figure out how to put those plastic coffee pods in the machines themselves, but these people are not fools. They will order out. If they can figure out how to work the telephones.

True, the doomsayers say that our national defense will be cut by $42.7 billion. But this still leaves billions and billions for pork: armaments that don’t work and weapons systems that not even the Pentagon wants. Members of Congress insist on spending this money, however, to show voters they can bring home the bacon.